One Thousandth of an Inch: Mike Clark and the Art of the Bamboo Fly Rod

Inside South Creek Ltd. With Bamboo Fly Rod Maker Mike Clark

Inside South Creek Ltd. in Lyons, Colorado, where Mike Clark has spent nearly five decades building bamboo fly rods by hand.

Mike Clark working on a handmade bamboo fly rod at his workbench in Lyons, Colorado.

Mike Clark has been building handmade bamboo fly rods at South Creek Ltd.since 1979.

Talk to any fly fisherman on the planet and the conversation will eventually focus on this fish or that fish they so gracefully put in the net, usually with a heavy and repeated emphasis on inches. One time I caught a 35-inch something or other on this river, yada yada yada. The fish gets a little bigger as the night goes on, as does the fight needed to land it.

Mike Clark is a perennial fly fisherman, and that’s obvious when you see him lay down a cast, but in his business he deals with one-thousandth of an inch. That’s how precise the measurements are on his custom handmade bamboo fly rods. And that’s one reason you’ll go on a two-year waiting list after putting down a deposit for one.

Most folks without the fly fishing disease cruise right through the charming town of Lyons, Colorado, population 2,000, give or take, on their way to Estes or Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s easy enough to do. Lyons sits where the plains begin folding themselves into the foothills, a place people often treat as a sandwich stop or the beginning of somewhere else.

Those in the know, however, go out of their way for South Creek Ltd.

Mike Clark seated inside South Creek Ltd. beside bamboo cane and a collection of fly rods.

Mike Clark inside South Creek Ltd. in Lyons, Colorado, surrounded by bamboo cane and generations of fly rod history.

It’s not a fly shop in the traditional sense. There aren’t aisles of plastic gadgets a grizzled guide insists you need before your next day on the river. Even from the sidewalk, you can tell this place is different.

Inside the large front windows are stunning trout mounts beneath plush maroon curtains, pulled back to reveal a pile of bamboo that stands from the floor and kisses the vaulted ceilings. Walk through the door and you’re greeted by a panorama of exquisite rods and reels lining the walls and filling antique glass display cabinets. Everywhere you look there is wood, metal, cork, cane, old photographs, fishing history and the accumulated evidence of a man who has spent most of his adult life thinking about fly rods.

The design, presentation and texture of the room make it feel less like a store than a private fly fishing museum or art gallery that, somehow, you’ve been allowed into. Move closer, though, and you’ll realize almost everything is for sale. Even a rod made more than a century ago.

Antique bamboo fly rods displayed inside South Creek Ltd. in Lyons, Colorado.

South Creek Ltd. is also home to antique rods made by some of the craftsmenwho helped shape the history of bamboo fly fishing.

Mike doesn’t only sell his own custom rods. He deals in antiques made by many of the legendary craftsmen who came before him, which means the shop functions as both his place of business and a physical timeline of the craft. Pick something up and there’s a good chance Mike can tell you who made it, when they made it and why it matters.

Speaking of legends, there’s a framed photograph sitting on the counter showing three men in fishing gear beside a river. To the undiscerning eye, it’s just that: three guys on a fishing trip.Again, to those in the know, it’s something else entirely. One of them is Mike. Another is John Gierach, the great fly fishing writer and longtime Lyons resident. The third is A.K. Best, the world-famous fly tier. Both were dear friends of Mike’s. Both are now gone.

“I’m short on friends these days,” Clark says.

Handwritten note from fly fishing writer John Gierach displayed inside South Creek Ltd.

A handwritten note from the great Eric Clapton - a customer of South Creek.

He doesn’t dwell on it. That seems to be Mike’s way. At 79 years old, there’s plenty of history around him, but not much interest in turning sentimental about it. The articles are there. The rods are there. The stories are there if you ask. But there is also work to be done. And you don’t keep company like Gierach and Best for decades as an Average Joe.

The fact of the matter is that Mike Clark is one of the last of a dying breed. Few, if any, will ever rival the level of craftsmanship coming off his workbench, which sits in another space connected to the showroom. If you stop into South Creek on the right day, you might get a peek behind the curtain and see the master at work.

Mike Clark working at his bamboo fly rod workbench surrounded by tools at South Creek Ltd.

Mike's workbench bears the accumulated tools, materials and evidence of nearly five decades spent building bamboo fly rods.

At first, watching Clark in his element might seem almost unimpressive. You might wonder, What’s the big deal? And why the hell are these things so expensive? His rods start around $3,000 and go up when you add things like custom engraving, 24-karat gold plating or a leather rod tube.

The answer becomes clearer the longer you watch.

Mike started building bamboo fly rods in 1979 and has been striving for perfection ever since. Nearly five decades of doing something over and over has a way of removing all the unnecessary movement. Today his actions are slow, fluid and economical. Nothing seems particularly difficult because he’s spent 47 years making sure it doesn’t.

Don’t be fooled.

Mike Clark's hands using a plane on bamboo with curled cane shavings surrounding the tool.

Building a bamboo fly rod requires repeated handwork and measurements precise to one-thousandth of an inch.

Each rod is one of one and goes through roughly 1,400 operations and inspections before Mike will consider letting it leave the shop.

That level of thought begins long before he touches a piece of bamboo, all of which has been seasoning for four years. Mike wants to know where you fish. What kind of water. What part of the world. What species you’re after. How you intend to use the rod.

Those answers matter because they determine what he builds.

South Creek isn’t a place where you click a few boxes online, enter a credit card number and wait for a tracking notification. The person making your rod wants to understand why you want it in the first place.

Mike cares.

Mike Clark inspecting a long strip of bamboo cane while building a fly rod at his workbench.

Each custom rod begins with seasoned bamboo and is built for the water, species and fishing style of its eventual owner.

That’s what makes his rods coveted. It’s also why he has no problem throwing one in the garbage if it isn’t 100 percent to his liking, even if the flaw is so minute that nobody other than Mike Clark would ever know it existed.

Think about that for a minute. After all the hours, all the individual operations, all the measurements and all the accumulated knowledge required to get a rod nearly to completion, nearly perfect still isn’t good enough.

Mike Clark working a strip of bamboo at his bench during the fly rod building process.

Decades of repetition have made Mike's movements at the bench slow, deliberate and economical.

There are innumerable ways Mike could increase production. He knows that. There are machines that could make certain processes faster. He could hire more people. Streamline things. Increase output. Make more money.

He doesn’t care.

The final product is the concern because Mike knows the rod will outlive the person who ordered it.

His clients don’t buy these things because they need another fly rod. You can catch trout perfectly well with a mass-produced graphite rod that costs a fraction of the price. Mike will be the first person to remind you of that.

“The fish don’t care how much your rod costs,” he says.

That might be the best explanation for South Creek.

The fish don’t care.

The fisherman does.

Mike Clark uses a small torch while working on bamboo at his rod-building bench.

Roughly 1,400 operations and inspections go into a Mike Clark bamboo fly rod before it leaves South Creek Ltd.

A Mike Clark rod will be cherished by its owner, then very likely handed to a son or daughter, and perhaps someday to someone who hasn’t even been born yet.

But Mike doesn’t build them to be mounted over a fireplace.

He builds them to be fished. To get wet. To be carried through brush. To bend against trout. To create memories. And maybe, decades from now, to create somebody else’s memories.

That philosophy makes more sense when you step into his workshop.

The place feels lived in because it is.

Mike’s lifetime of passion and hard work can be felt at the bench and in everything surrounding him. Antique wood cabinets are filled with tools. Exotic materials occupy corners. Photographs and art hang on the walls. Objects have naturally migrated into the places where they belong after years of use.

Close-up of Mike Clark's hands holding a bound section of bamboo fly rod.

The details that separate one rod from another can be nearly invisible to everyone except the man who made it.

His domain reminds me of an old barbershop. Not one of the new ones designed to look old, but the real thing. A place where the tools, cabinets, pictures and furniture have developed a certain patina that can’t be bought or manufactured.

It only comes from repetition. From someone standing in the same place and doing the same thing well for a very long time.

Look at the linoleum around the chair in an old barbershop and you can see where the barber stood during decades of haircuts. Mike’s shop has that same feeling. You can feel his presence at the bench as he works each piece of cane down to one-thousandth of an inch.

There is something almost comical about that number when you consider how fly fishermen normally measure things.

We brag in inches.

Mike works in thousandths.

Mike Clark sitting beside a Colorado creek with a bamboo fly rod and fishing gear.

Mike doesn't build his rods to hang over a fireplace. He builds them to be fished.

At 79, Clark moves and talks with the bravado of a man with nothing left to prove. His Missouri roots never faded, and there’s a swagger to him, but it doesn’t come across as arrogance. It’s closer to the confidence of someone who knows exactly what he can do because he has spent nearly half a century doing it.

More importantly, he knows what happens after one of those rods leaves Lyons.

Someone takes it to a river.

Maybe in Colorado. Maybe Montana. Maybe halfway around the world.

They string it up. Step into the water. Make a cast.

Eventually, if things go right, a trout eats.

And for a moment, all those years of experience, four years of aging bamboo, 1,400 operations and inspections, and measurements made down to one-thousandth of an inch disappear into something wonderfully simple: a fisherman standing in moving water with a bent rod in his hand.

Meanwhile, Mike sits at his bench figuring out how to make an even better one.

Mike Clark fly fishing with a bamboo rod beside a rocky canyon wall in Colorado.

After years of experience, thousands of individual steps and measurements made to one-thousandth of an inch, the rod eventually arrives where Mike intended it to be: on the water.

Photography & words by Rob Hammer

About the Photographs

I've spent years photographing fly fishing throughout Colorado and the American West, but the culture surrounding the sport has always interested me as much as what happens on the water. The people, places, traditions and skills behind fly fishing tell a much larger story.

Photographing Mike Clark at South Creek Ltd. is also part of a broader interest in people who have dedicated their lives to doing something well. Whether it's a bamboo rod maker in Colorado, a cowboy working cattle, a barber who's stood behind the same chair for decades or craftspeople making leather by hand, I'm drawn to work that still bears the evidence of the person who made it.

Explore more: Fly Fishing Photography | Fine Art Fly Fishing Prints | At Work Photography

Inside One of America’s Oldest Leather Tanneries

Inside Wickett & Craig: Photographs of an American Leather Tannery

Leather is part of our everyday lives, but most people never give any thought to what it is or where it comes from. After more than 6 years photographing working cowboys and ranches throughout the American West, I'm accustomed to seeing it everywhere: saddles, reins, bridles, chaps, boots, belts, and countless other pieces of gear. Usually, by the time I photograph it, the leather has already spent years being worked hard.

The Wickett & Craig tannery in Curwensville, Pennsylvania, offered an opportunity to see the other end of that story.

Founded in 1867, Wickett & Craig has been making leather for more than 150 years and is one of the few remaining specialty vegetable tanneries in the United States. The company spent its first 123 years in Toronto before moving to Pennsylvania around 1990, where it now operates a large tannery producing millions of square feet of leather each year.

I went there to photograph the people, machinery, and process behind it.

Workers handle leather hides beside machinery inside the Wickett & Craig tannery in Pennsylvania

Hides move through one of the working areas inside Wickett & Craig.

Inside an American Leather Tannery

There isn't much about the inside of Wickett & Craig that feels designed for visitors. It's a working industrial building, and nearly every surface shows evidence of what happens there. Pipes run overhead, hides hang throughout the facility, enormous drums occupy entire sections of the building, and years of water, oils, dyes, tannins, and production have left their marks on the floors, walls, and machinery.

That's exactly what made the place interesting to photograph.

I've always been attracted to working environments where nothing has been cleaned up or arranged for the camera. There is already enough visual information in a place like this. The challenge isn't creating something interesting, but figuring out how to organize what is already happening into a photograph.

Wickett & Craig operates on more than 16 acres and produces roughly 4.5 million square feet of leather annually. Walking through the tannery, the scale of that production is immediately apparent. Hides are stacked, hanging, stretched, soaked, rolled, and fed through machinery as they move from one part of the building to another.

The finished leather most people recognize is still a long way off.

Leather hides hang above tanning vats inside the industrial tannery

Hides hang over the tanning vats as they move through the vegetable tanning process.

A Wickett & Craig worker handles a large wet leather hide beside a metal processing machine inside the Pennsylvania tannery.

Leather is handled by hand in the tannery's wet processing areas.

Making Vegetable-Tanned Leather

Wickett & Craig specializes in vegetable-tanned leather, a traditional method that uses naturally derived tannins to transform raw cattle hides into leather. Compared with modern chrome tanning, vegetable tanning is a considerably slower process. At Wickett & Craig, the complete transformation takes roughly six weeks.

The hides come from North American cattle and first have to be prepared, rehydrated, dehaired, fleshed, and split before tanning begins. From there they move into a tanning yard containing 72 vats filled with a proprietary tanning liquor that includes natural extracts from mimosa and quebracho. The hides spend approximately two weeks in the tanning solution.

After tanning, the leather moves through a series of processes that determine its eventual thickness, color, feel, and finish. Large rotating drums are used for dyeing and conditioning. Oils and waxes are worked into the leather, while products such as Wickett & Craig's English Bridle and Harness leathers receive additional treatment with waxes and tallows.

Eventually the hides are stretched across large perforated screens and moved into a climate-controlled drying area. After several days of drying, they continue through finishing and grading before leaving the tannery.

Understanding the basic process helps explain the photographs, but what interested me most wasn't the individual sequence of steps. It was seeing how much physical work still exists inside an operation producing leather at this scale.

A Wickett & Craig worker stands beside a large brown leather hide inside the Pennsylvania tannery

A brief pause in the work, surrounded by leather and processing machinery.

The People Behind the Process

Machines do a lot of the heavy work at Wickett & Craig, but the tannery doesn't feel automated.

Workers are constantly handling the material, moving hides, operating equipment, checking leather, guiding it through machines, and preparing it for whatever happens next. Even with the size of the facility and machinery, there is a very human rhythm to the place.

That's something I've always been drawn to photograph.

People who have done the same kind of work for years develop an efficiency that is difficult to fake. Movements become automatic. They know how a piece of material should behave and recognize when something isn't right. That kind of physical knowledge is visible even when you don't fully understand the job yourself.

Photographing people who are actually working also changes my role as a photographer. There is very little reason for me to direct anything. I can watch, learn the rhythm of what is happening, and try to anticipate where the next photograph might be.

The goal isn't to make the tannery look cleaner, prettier, or more dramatic than it is. The worn machinery, wet floors, stained walls, work clothes, hanging hides, and odd industrial light are all part of the place. Removing those things would remove much of what makes it worth photographing.

Two workers handle a suspended hide beside industrial machinery at Wickett & Craig

Handling a hide this size takes two people.

A worker handles leather hides on a conveyor inside the Wickett & Craig tannery in Pennsylvania

Conveyors, hanging hides, and machinery fill this section of the production floor.

A Tannery With More Than 150 Years of History

Wickett & Craig began making leather in Toronto in 1867 and remained there for more than a century. When the company relocated around 1990, it moved to Curwensville, a small Pennsylvania town in a region with its own long history of tanning and leather production.

Today, the company occupies a facility covering more than 16 acres. Although the machinery and production requirements have evolved over the years, Wickett & Craig continues to specialize in vegetable tanning at a time when much of the world's leather is produced using faster methods.

There is something compelling about seeing an old process continuing at a meaningful industrial scale. This isn't a demonstration of how leather used to be made or a historic workshop preserved for visitors. People are coming to work every day and producing leather that will be shipped to manufacturers and craftspeople around the world.

The history is interesting, but the fact that the work is still happening is what matters.

Photographing People at Work

The photographs from Wickett & Craig also fit into a much broader subject I've returned to throughout my career: people at work.

I've photographed inside barbershops across all 50 states, on cattle ranches throughout the American West, and in workshops, factories, and other places where people make things or work with their hands. The occupations are different, but many of the things that attract me to them are the same.

Working environments develop their own visual language. Tools end up in particular places because that's where they're needed. Buildings change around the work being done inside them. Clothing gets stained and machinery gets worn in predictable places. The environment gradually becomes a record of the work itself.

The people change too. Someone who has performed a task thousands of times moves differently from someone doing it for the first time. Those small gestures and routines often make better photographs than anything I could have staged.

That's why I'm generally most comfortable photographing people while they're actually doing something. Once the work starts, my presence becomes less important. The person I'm photographing has something else to concentrate on, which allows the photographs to become less about the camera and more about what is actually happening.

Interior of the Wickett & Craig tannery with leather, work tables, barrels, and industrial equipment on the production floor

Pipes, barrels, work tables, and leather give the production floor its distinctly industrial character.

A folded leather hide is carried past metal machinery and stacked materials on the tannery floor

Moving hides from one part of the tannery to another is part of the daily work.

From the Tannery to the Cowboy

My interest in Wickett & Craig also connects naturally to my ongoing Cowboy Photography project.

Leather is one of the fundamental materials of cowboy culture, although it's easy to overlook because it is so commonplace. A working cowboy may spend much of the day surrounded by it without ever thinking of leather as a material in the abstract. It has already become a saddle, reins, a bridle, boots, chaps, or a belt. It's equipment.

The leather I've photographed on ranches also tends to be at the opposite end of its life from what I saw at Wickett & Craig. Saddles have been shaped by years on horseback, reins darkened by hands, sweat, and weather, and boots scratched and covered in dust. Good leather records its use, which is part of what makes old cowboy gear so visually interesting.

At Wickett & Craig, I was seeing the material before any of that happened. Before a saddlemaker or leatherworker turned it into something useful, and long before years of work gave it the character I'm accustomed to photographing.

Some of the heavier leather produced at Wickett & Craig ultimately becomes saddles, bridles, straps, and other equestrian equipment. That creates a direct line between a tannery in a small Pennsylvania town and the ranches I've photographed thousands of miles away in the West.

A broad brown leather hide feeds through a large metal processing machine as it is guided by hand

Near the end of the process, leather passes through one of the tannery's finishing machines.

A worker lies on a work table surrounded by leather hides and processing equipment inside the Wickett & Craig tannery

A brief pause after a long day of work, surrounded by leather and equipment.

A portrait surrounded by carts loaded with leather on the tannery's production floor

A portrait between the carts of leather and large drums on the tannery floor.

The Work Before the Work

One of the things I like about photographing manufacturing is that it exposes parts of everyday objects that are normally invisible.

When you look at a well-made saddle, it's natural to think about the saddlemaker. You see the stitching, tooling, construction, and design and understand that someone had to know how to make it. What is much easier to forget is that the craftsman began with a material somebody else had already spent weeks making.

The same is true of boots, belts, bridles, and countless other leather goods.

By the time those objects reach the people who use them, the tannery has disappeared from the story. There is no obvious evidence of the vats, drums, drying racks, machinery, or workers in Pennsylvania who handled the leather long before it became a finished object.

That's part of what made Wickett & Craig worth photographing.

My Cowboy project is largely about documenting a working culture that still exists despite the tendency to talk about the American West in the past tense. The same idea applies here. Wickett & Craig isn't interesting simply because the company was founded in 1867 or because vegetable tanning is an old process.

It's interesting because people are still doing the work.

A hide comes into the tannery. Over the next several weeks, people and machines transform it into leather. That leather leaves Pennsylvania and becomes something else in somebody else's hands. Eventually, some of it will wind up on a horse or a ranch, where another kind of work begins.

The tannery and the cowboy might seem like two completely different subjects.

For me, they're connected by the same thing: the work.

Worn tools stand in two barrels inside the Wickett & Craig tannery

Years of use show up in the tools and equipment around the tannery.

A worker handles a leather hide beside industrial processing machinery at Wickett & Craig

The work continues around the large processing machines inside the tannery.

Stacks of brown leather hides fill a production area alongside machinery, carts, and work surfaces

Stacks of leather wait alongside the machinery and work areas throughout the facility.

Photographing Wyoming: Cowboys, Ranches & the Open Road

Wyoming Photography: Cowboys, Ranches, Small Towns & the American West

Weathered wooden ranch corrals with Wyoming mountains in the distance

Weathered wooden corrals sit against the mountains in the distance.

I've spent a lot of time driving through Wyoming over the years, usually with somewhere specific to be and enough time built into the trip to stop when something catches my attention. And in Wyoming, that happens a lot.

Most photography of Wyoming understandably focuses on the obvious places. Yellowstone, wildlife, etc etc. All of which deserve the attention they get. But that's never really been what keeps me coming back with a camera.

I'm more interested in the Wyoming between those places.

The working ranches. Cowboys. Small towns. Rodeos. Bars. Old motels. Empty highways. People going about their lives. And all the strange, quiet things you find after enough hours on the road.

Over the years, those photographs have become part of several long-term bodies of work documenting the American West. Taken together, they tell a story about Wyoming that has less to do with its famous scenery and more to do with what it feels like to spend time there.

Worn cowboy boots resting on a workbench inside an old Western building

Worn cowboy boots sit among the tools and debris in a burned out building.

Photographing Wyoming Beyond The Instagram Hot Spots

There probably isn't another state in America as visually associated with the West as Wyoming. It's hard to separate the place from the mythology surrounding it.

The landscape certainly has something to do with that. Everything feels bigger. Towns are separated by enormous stretches of nothing. Weather can change quickly. Mountains appear on the horizon and stay there for hours.

But the longer I've photographed Wyoming, the more interested I've become in the evidence of people living inside that landscape.

A faded motel sign. An old truck parked outside a bar. A gas station in the middle of nowhere. Horses standing behind a fence. A main street that looks like it hasn't changed much in 40 years.

None of those things are unique to Wyoming on their own. Together, though, they start to describe the place in a way that another photograph of the Tetons can't.

That's the Wyoming I keep looking for.

Weathered green vintage car parked beside an old Wyoming building

An old car parked beside a dilapidated building adds another detail along the road.

Man sitting in a pickup truck with an American flag on a Wyoming street

A man holding a gun sits in his truck with a Trump flag hanging off the tailgate.

Old motel beside a Wyoming road with rocky cliffs behind it

The old motel sits beside the road with rocky cliffs behind it.

Package liquor storefront with Bud Light sign in a Wyoming town

Old signs and storefronts are part of the small-town landscape.

Wyoming Cowboy Photography

For the past several years, a significant part of my work has focused on working cowboys and ranches throughout the American West.

There's an enormous difference between photographing the idea of a cowboy and photographing someone who actually makes a living horseback.

The work isn't performed for the camera. Cattle need to be gathered and moved. Calves need to be branded. Fences need fixing. Horses need to be saddled. The weather doesn't care that you're trying to make photographs.

That's precisely what makes it interesting.

When I'm photographing cowboys in Wyoming, I'm not interested in manufacturing some romantic version of the West that doesn't exist. I'm interested in the things that happen naturally when people are doing work they've spent their lives learning how to do.

A rider disappearing into a cloud of dust. The way a horse and cowboy move together while sorting cattle. Frozen hands early in the morning. Long stretches where nothing particularly dramatic happens, followed by thirty seconds when everything happens at once.

Those moments are what have kept me working on this project year after year.

They also serve as a reminder that the American cowboy isn't simply a historical character. Ranching culture is still very much alive in Wyoming.

Weathered wooden cattle corrals on a working ranch in Wyoming

Weathered cattle corrals sit below the rolling hills on a working ranch in Wyoming.

Close view of a cowboy's horse wearing a worn Western bridle

First light illuminates a horses face on a working cattle ranch.

Cowboy on horseback moving cattle across a Wyoming ranch

Working cattle brings the cowboy, horses, and land into the same frame.

Photographing Working Ranches in Wyoming

Access is everything when photographing ranches.

You can't understand much about a place by showing up for twenty minutes, making a few photographs and leaving. The pictures get better when people stop paying attention to the camera.

That takes time.

Over the years I've been fortunate to spend time on working ranches throughout the West, documenting cattle drives, brandings, roundups and the everyday work that happens between those bigger events.

Some of my favorite photographs aren't necessarily of cowboys at all.

They're the details surrounding the work. Saddles worn smooth from years of use. A pair of gloves sitting on a fence post. Steam coming off a horse on a cold morning. Trucks covered in dirt. Dogs waiting for something to happen. People standing around talking after the work is finished.

Those details say as much about ranching as the dramatic moments do.

The landscape is always present too. In Wyoming, it's impossible for it not to be. Ranching happens at a scale that can make a rider on horseback look insignificant against the country surrounding them.

That relationship between people, animals and land is a large part of what I'm trying to photograph.

Cowboy on horseback moving cattle across a Wyoming ranch

Horse and rider move through the pasture as cattle gather nearby.

Portrait of a cowboy wearing a hat and bandana

Cowboy portrait inside a working ranch workshop.

Small Town Wyoming

Long before I started seriously photographing cowboys, I was photographing the American road.

For years I've driven around the country making photographs of places and objects that aren't typically considered important enough to photograph. Motels. Diners. signs. Abandoned buildings. Old cars. Storefronts. Bars. Basketball hoops. And whatever else makes me pull over.

Wyoming is particularly good for that kind of wandering.

There are towns where the main street seems disproportionately wide for the number of people living there. Bars that might be the only place open for miles. Old motels hanging on beside highways that travelers now pass through without stopping.

Some places are changing quickly. Others feel like they exist in their own time zone.

That's what interests me.

Road trips are usually organized around destinations, but photography has taught me that the spaces between those destinations are often more interesting.

Wyoming has a lot of space between destinations.

And I've learned not to hurry through it.

Weathered brick building with an old clock and boarded window in Wyoming

Old clocks, weathered brick, and worn storefronts are part of the small-town landscape.

White church and quiet main street in a small Wyoming town

Small-town streets like this make it easy to slow down and look around.

Wyoming small town street with storefronts and mountains in the distance

Wyoming's main streets often run straight toward the mountains, with businesses and storefronts along the road.

Small Wyoming town with homes and a mountain rising behind them

The mountains rise behind the houses and streets of town.

Portrait of a man standing inside a Western workshop in Wyoming

Light from the window adds detail to the portrait.

Books tools and supplies on shelves inside a Wyoming ranch workshop

Books, tools, and supplies fill the shelves and workbench of the shop.

Man working on a rifle at a cluttered workbench in a Wyoming shop

A man works on a rifle at the crowded workbench.

Saddles and Western ranch gear inside a Wyoming ranch building

Saddles and ranch gear fill the interior of the building.

Rodeo Culture in Dubois, Wyoming

Dubois is a small town in western Wyoming with a population of roughly a thousand people. During the summer, Friday nights mean rodeo.

I went there expecting to photograph the rodeo and came away much more interested in everything surrounding it.

Of course there were cowboys, horses, broncs and bulls. But there were also kids running around behind the chutes, families sitting in the stands, competitors talking before their events and all the little interactions happening away from the arena.

Afterward, a lot of the same people ended up at the local bar.

That's where the story became more interesting to me.

Cowboys who had been competing a few hours earlier were drinking, talking and dancing. Rodeo spectators mixed with locals. The distinction between the event and everyday life disappeared.

Those photographs became less about rodeo and more about a small Western community.

That's generally where I want the camera to be.

Cowboy on horseback carrying an American flag at a Wyoming rodeo

A cowboy carries an American flag through the rodeo arena.

Cowboys and spectators gathered at a Wyoming rodeo in the evening

Cowboys and spectators gather around the rodeo as the evening gets underway.

Cowboy riding a horse at a Wyoming rodeo in low light

Horse and rider move through the arena in a blur of motion.

Crowded Western bar at night in a Wyoming town after a rodeo

The night continues at the local bar after the rodeo.

Cowboys and spectators gathered inside a Wyoming bar after a rodeo

Rodeo competitors and spectators mix together inside the bar after the events.

Rodeo participant in Western clothing walking through a Wyoming bar

The rodeo continues into the evening at the local bar.

Wyoming Road Trip Photography

Driving is an enormous part of making this work.

There isn't really another way around it.

Wyoming rewards that kind of travel because the distances force you to slow down. You can drive for hours through country that initially appears empty before realizing how much is actually there.

Weather systems move across the horizon. Light changes constantly. Pronghorn appear beside the highway. Towns come and go in a few minutes.

Then there's all the human stuff.

Hand-painted signs. Old bars. Gas stations. Churches. Trucks. Motels. Ranch entrances. Buildings whose original purpose isn't immediately obvious.

I've missed plenty of photographs because I told myself I'd stop on the way back.

I've learned not to do that anymore.

If something makes me look twice, I turn around.

Sometimes it turns into a photograph. Most of the time it doesn't. That's part of the process.

There isn't a checklist for this kind of Wyoming road trip photography. I'm not driving from one famous overlook to another trying to reproduce photographs I've already seen.

The whole point is not knowing what I'm looking for until I see it.

Dirt road winding through sagebrush and open Wyoming countryside

The dirt road cuts through the open country and sagebrush.

Golden West Motel sign and weathered building in a Wyoming town

Mountains rise behind the Golden West Motel and its roadside sign.

Open Wyoming landscape with a mountain ridge and lone tree

Open country and scattered trees stretch toward the mountains.

Weathered brick storefront with chimney and entrance in Wyoming

Weathered brick and an old storefront show the age of the building.

Fish shaped sign above a street in a small Wyoming town

A fish-shaped sign adds another unexpected detail to a small Wyoming town.

Why I Keep Photographing Wyoming

The West has changed enormously, and it continues to change.

That's part of the reason I feel an urgency to keep photographing it.

I'm not interested in pretending Wyoming is frozen in some earlier era. It isn't. New houses go up. Old businesses disappear. Ranches change hands. Towns grow. People leave and other people arrive.

At the same time, there are aspects of life here that remain closely connected to the state's history.

People still make their living raising cattle. Cowboys still spend long days horseback. Small-town rodeos still bring communities together on summer nights. There are still roads where you can drive a long time without seeing another car.

The tension between those things interests me.

Photography can't preserve a place, but it can preserve evidence of what it looked and felt like at a particular moment.

That's enough reason for me to keep going back.

There will always be another road I haven't driven, another ranch I haven't visited, another town I've passed through too quickly.

And probably another reason to turn the truck around.

Sandman Motel sign and storefront along a Wyoming street

The Sandman Motel sign stands beside the road in town.

Snow covered ranch buildings and livestock trailer beneath Wyoming mountains

Ranch buildings and a livestock trailer sit in the snow below the mountains.

Western Motel building and sign in a small Wyoming town

The Western Motel sits along the road beneath the rocky cliffs.

Basketball hoop mounted against a brick building beneath a Wyoming hillside

A basketball hoop stands against a brick building below the rocky hillside.

Fine Art Photography of Wyoming & the American West

These Wyoming photographs are part of my larger ongoing documentation of cowboy culture, working ranches, rural communities and everyday life throughout the American West.

A selection of the work is available as limited-edition fine art photography prints, produced using archival materials and available in a range of sizes and custom framing options.

The photographs aren't intended to present a polished or invented version of the West. They're records of people, places and moments I've encountered after years of traveling and photographing this part of America.

View the Full Cowboy Gallery

View Cowboy Photography Prints

View More Roadtrip Photography

View my Roadtrip Photography Book

Wyoming road leading through open country toward a mountain

The road runs through open country toward the mountains.

Wyoming mountain range beyond a sagebrush covered hillside

Sagebrush and open country stretch toward the mountain range.

Wyoming lake reflecting mountains and clouds across the open landscape

The lake reflects the mountains and clouds across the open country.

Grand Teton mountain range rising above the Wyoming landscape

The Grand Teton range rises above the landscape.